Thoughts on book publishing, editing, contemporary poetry, dementia, administrative memos, and teaching by the editor of Tinfish Press.

Friday, December 19, 2014

Meditation 1

An empty book is
like an infant's soul.An empty
soul cannot be realized. To realize is to render.
What portion of soul is lost to hanging men, to torture's
inefficiencies. What portion of loss nets the pain of broken legs,
forced to stand on wet concrete. “Who authorized the pain meds?”
the
president asked. Questions are rhetorical that are meant to be
answered otherwise. He took that as an order. Torture, like the
alphabet, orders elements with impunity. A before S before Z, leg
before rectum before mouth. He said water boarding was not as bad as
fingernail pulling. He used the word “enhanced,” not to mean
penis but pain. There's rectitude in this, etiquette even. What you
do in a small room with someone else is not ours to know. We might
read it as a kind of love, were we not given the photographs. There
is too much witness, too little testimony. The
digital window owns no soul, has its own brute force. What I see
changes me, not it. Truth
remaindered: wind, palms, birdsong, weed whacker drone.